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The World Cup Boycott Starts Now

I have watched almost every England game since I was a child. I used to have a delusion that we could be the best in the world – nowadays I have construed an ability to delight in disappointment.

But the awarding of the World Cups to Russia, and particularly, Qatar, stink.

And I have to make a stand. It may only be me and a handful of others but I simply cannot support the flagship worldwide sporting event being held in countries with such poor human rights records. I cannot abide by it morally.

Therefore I am boycotting the FIFA World Cup in both 2018 and 2022, including all the qualification games.

There will be those amongst you that wouldn’t countenance watching an England qualification group anyway, for very understandable footballing reasons. Obtusely I will still be watching dreary England friendlies – but they have nothing to do with the corruption of FIFA.

Not only do the next two host countries have poor human rights records, but the way that they were awarded smelt dodgy. Sure, you can allege that this is sour grapes because England was not awarded the right to host the tournament, and sure, I was disappointed. But had Russia and Qatar cleaned up their record, there would have been no question of me watching every single England game.

There is something not right about the way Russia and Qatar were awarded those games – I had held Blatter under suspicion and contempt ever since the mid-1990’s, finally it seems that he is on the verge of being proven to be one crooked beast. The time will hopefully come when it is proven that the award of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments was also dodgy.

My boycott is of all FIFA World Cup games in terms of attendance and watching/listening. I will not boycott the England team per se, so I will still read and listen to comments about them and their performances – as a football fan that would be pretty difficult to avoid.

I will also be boycotting all sponsors of both World Cups. Right now, apparently there are no sponsors. FIFA do have general sponsors, which are:

Adidas

Coca Cola

Gazprom

Hyundai

VISA

Budweiser

McDonalds

Some of those are not so easy to avoid – my bank issue me with a VISA debit card, for example. And I cannot control where my gas supplier buys its gas from. But I can certainly avoid drinking Budweiser.

I appreciate that it will provide me with a very difficult conundrum should we reach the World Cup Final – but I’m not expecting to have to worry about that situation.

Is anyone else joining me in taking a stand against this corrupt organisation?